As promised, here is the schedule for our current workout block. Feel free to switch around days if you need to!

Monday: Rest day. Spin sooper dooper easily, do some easy cross-training, or take the day off if you’re feeling beat-up.

Tuesday: 6×10 Tempo Intervals. Do six, ten minute intervals at ~80-90% max heart rate with 5 minutes of rest between each interval. Keep your cadence around 90, and feel free to get up out of the saddle every now and then. These intervals should not be that difficult, so are a great time to work on technique. Be sure to keep your upper body as relaxed and motionless as possible, maintain an even pedal stroke, and keep your head up and eyes looking forward.

Wednesday:1×1’s. Do a long warmup with a few short, hard efforts. Then do 6 sets of: 1 minute on at VO2 (HR at about 90-95% of max. This is not an all out sprint, but definitely hard. 1 minute rest (keep spinning!) After 20 minutes at aerobic pace, repeat the 6 sets.

Thursday: Rest Day.

Friday: 6×10’s. (Repeat Tuesday)

Saturday: Tabata Intervals. Take a good, long warm-up (at least 15 min, high cadence, with several harder efforts thrown in to get the big muscles in your legs nice and loose)
-One set of Tabatas/sprints will be comprised of: 20 seconds sprinting, 10 seconds resting. Repeat 8 times for a total of 4min. To be clear, these are zone 5, SMSP, balls-out SPRINTS. If you are monitoring HR, you should be at about 105% of your max HR.
-Complete 6 sets of these sprint intervals for a total of 48 sprints. Take a 3min rest between sets.
A few tips for these intervals. These will feel very easy at first and then get hard quickly. Look to maintain a constant power output in the sprint and alternate between seated and out-of-the-saddle sprints. More importantly, remember that this workout has two purposes. One is to squeeze every drop of power from our legs. More important, at least in my humble opinion, is to improve our pedaling form in a high-output situation. Focus on keeping your upper body stable and your arms your arms relaxed. Keep your pedals strokes round and keep your ankles loose. Use your core to stabilize you and prevent any “side-to-side” rocking on the trainer.

Sunday: LSD. 1.5-2 hours of aerobic riding (i.e. the perfect time to watch a movie!). note: this is not a rest day, so don’t just spin mindlessly. You should be working (just not very hard).

I know it’s feeling like the winter will never end and we’ll be riding inside forever, but it won’t be long before we can take to the roads again! Even this much snow has to melt eventually!

Attention all members, alums, parents, and all around fans of Williams Cycling. The clothing order process for this year is finally underway! Click over to the “clothing” page on the left to see renderings of the artwork and a list of pricing!

Congrats to Erik Levinsohn ‘12 and Ceci Davis-Hayes ‘11, who rode to excellent results in today’s season opener at Stevens Institute of Technology. Erik lit up the Men’s A field with an explosive ride and a 1st place finish, riding to the line a minute and a half ahead of the peloton. In the Women’s A field, Ceci held the wheel of perennial heavyweight Lenore Pipes (Cornell) to finish 2nd. As a team we are incredibly proud of our friends and former classmates, and we can’t wait to ride with them (or, more likely, behind them) during our upcoming ECCC races.

Unfortunately, there will be a slight delay with our sock order. Hincapie did an initial production run and found that the yellow highlights in the sock caused substantial discoloration in the body of the sock. Since a half black/half grey-ish sock looked fairly silly, we have asked the company to do a new production run. This is expected to take 2-3 weeks.

Obviously, we are not happy about this situation and have expressed our dissatisfaction to Hincapie. Please be patient with us as we work to rectify the situation.
-Todd

Exciting news from Hincapie Sportswear – our clothing order has shipped from Bogota, Colombia and should arrive in Williamstown shortly after the boxes are released by U.S. Customs (for some reason they always check these shipments very thoroughly…)

Four technique drills to combat boredom on the indoor trainer. These will help build form by exploring the extreme ends of the pedaling regime.

UNO — Muscle Tension:
Slow cadence (50-60 rpm), pushed back in the saddle or hovering just above. Use a large gear and high resistance (can be done outdoors on a gradual hill). Concentrate on keeping your whole body tensed and immobile, turning the legs in perfect smooth circles. The sound from the trainer should be as even as possible, minimize the dead spots. Hands in the drops or on the hoods. Hold for 2 minutes.

DOS — High Spin:
High to maximum cadence (120+ rpm), right below your bouncing threshold. Concentrate on a smooth, complete pedal stroke, keeping your arms and shoulders very relaxed and your hips loose and fluid. Hands on the tops or hoods. This works great using music where you can “double time” the beat, like during the chorus. Hold for ~30 seconds.

TRES — Power Starts:
Start from a stop or very low cadence, and build to 110 rpm or higher, a maximum sprint-type output. Think speed, not force. Start in a medium-high gear and click up at least twice during the 30-60 second interval. Concentrate on a round pedaling motion and smoothly getting on top of the gear, like a flywheel or electric motor. Stay in the saddle. Hands in the drops or hooks.

QUATRO — One-leg drills:
Unclip one foot and spin at a comfortable cadence for 30 seconds. Work on maintaining a smooth, circular pedaling motion.

These drills will pay off when you get tired on the road by keeping your pedal stroke smooth and efficient. Your competition will be pedaling squares and you will be spinning elegance.

We will open up our 2013 team clothing order as soon as we get details straightened out with our friends at Hincapie Sportswear. Our stylish black/purple/gold design will be back this year and we’ll follow the same order process as last year (see the “Clothing” tab for details). We expect to offer the standard velocity short-sleeve jersey and bibshorts (M)/shorts (W), as well as a wind vest, long-sleeve jersey, arm and leg warmers, and hats. If you’re looking for something that’s not on that list, please e-mail us ASAP and we’ll add it to the list.

**Stay tuned for sample photos and price lists** and e-mail tab2@williams.edu with questions or suggestions.

If you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little further.

By reaching this point, we’ve accrued an aerobic base, set a baseline by testing, built strength with slow-cadence riding, and worked on pedaling skills with single-leg riding and spin-ups. These are hugely important and will allow us to now move on to bigger (and better) things.

Given that the length of most collegiate races are pretty short, it’s absolutely crucial to develop “top-end” fitness. Because we have a solid background with endurance training and tempo work, we can move into the LT and even VO2 arenas.

Our training program, visualized.

Here’s what this means: workouts are going to become shorter but also higher intensity. Hopefully you’ve found that the long work periods of the slow-cadence work has gradually become more doable. Riding at slow cadence is tres difficile, but will make the next step incremental rather than a big jump.

That being said, we’re not totally giving up on tempo. Here’s one of my favorite graphs when it comes to training and accumulation of fitness:

Hitting the sweet spot

The main idea is this: in terms of making the largest gains possible, it’s best to do a lot of medium hard riding as opposed to a little bit of really hard riding. However, because we do want to eke out every single watt, we will need to dabble in the “red zone” of the graph, where the gains are great, but so is the level of fatigue experienced by the body.

In sum: we’ll keep up with the tempo, because that’s where the “low hanging fruit” is, but because we want to be ballers and win races, we need the diminishing marginal returns of VO2 training as well. Here’s what this looks like as a weekly schedule. As always, this schedule is subject to your academic/social/personal obligations. Definitely move stuff around to make it work for you.

A basic reminder about how to think about the various intensity levels:

Recovery: VERY, VERY EASY.
Aerobic: Easy. Should be sustainable for multiple hours without too much effort.
Tempo: What you could sustain for 1-2 hours. A tad slower than the pace of an all-out effort up Greylock.
LT: What you could sustain for ~30 minutes. About the pace for an all-out effort up Petersburg.
VO2: What you could sustain for 5-10 minutes. Think time trial pace.

Monday: Recovery day. I’d recommend spinning easy if you have time.

Tuesday: Tempo work. 6×10 at tempo (HR around 80-90% of max) with 5 minutes easy in between each set. Ride at a cadence around 90. Okay to get out of the saddle every now and then. Remember that cadence is NOWHERE NEAR ALL OUT. This should not be a super hard day. Remember the graph! You’re not doing your body any favors by going too hard today and then being unable to do Wednesday’s workout.

Wednesday: 1&1’s! One of my favorite workouts. Do a long warmup with a few short, hard efforts. Then do 6 sets of:

1 minute on at VO2 (HR at about 90-95% of max. This is not an all out sprint, but definitely hard.
1 minute rest (keep spinning!)

After 20 minutes at aerobic pace, repeat the 6 sets.

Thursday: Another recovery day. Be ready for a tough weekend!

Friday: Repeat Tuesday.

Saturday: Race sim. This is a bit of a wildcard, best done outside, preferably riding with others around your fitness level. The idea here is to incorporate aerobic, tempo, LT, and even VO2 work into one ride. Think of this as a “hard group ride”. If you need a bit more structure, think about doing the following: